


shiny things

by tovejansson



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Sexual Content, they get engaged then bang that's it that's all that happens, they're true vers but this fic adheres to the school of bottom richie rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 18:13:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21020087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tovejansson/pseuds/tovejansson
Summary: “You didn’t even get down on one fucking knee,” says Eddie, and great, he’s crying, which isextremelyfucking embarrassing and which he can tell by the look on Richie’s face he’s never going to live down. Every time someone asks for their proposal story, every single time, it’s going to be “oh, you should have seen it, Eddie was in pieces, absolutely sobbed, he was so overwhelmed, I’m tearing up just remembering it”, and Eddie’s horrified to realise he doesn’t mind at all.





	shiny things

**Author's Note:**

> For the clown group chat. Sorry I haven’t finished my proper fic yet, but this bubbled up from somewhere deep inside me and needed to get written asap. I promise I’ll get the other one finished before we all move on to a new collective hyperfixation.  
I was inspired to write this after seeing [this](https://rex-wild.tumblr.com/post/188073799376/day-1-ring-let-my-boys-be-happy) piece of art, which drove me somewhat feral and got me to finish a piece of fic for the first time in nearly four years. This story doesn’t follow the scenario in the art beyond the general proposal premise, but it was enough to get me to bash this out in like a week which is really fast for me so I highly recommend you all check it out.  
I’ve never written a sex scene before, and you can probably tell.  
I apologise for any British English which may have slipped through. I know next to nothing about America and even less about Maine.  
Title from Taylor Swift’s ‘Paper Rings’, because they really did go from friends to this! Fuck!

“Marry me,” says Richie, and his voice is very soft.

Eddie’s ears are suddenly ringing, and the concrete beneath his feet no longer feels very stable.

“You - what?” he manages, and he can hear his own heartbeat, can feel it in his fingertips.

“Yeah,” says Richie, and it’s like he’s just woken up out of a daydream. He smiles. “Yeah. Marry me, Eds.”

“Richie, I -” Eddie is breathing fast, and is his vision blurring? His vision’s blurring. Jesus Christ, he doesn’t know what’s happening. They’re stood in a fucking parking lot. They’ve just had dinner at a new conceptual restaurant a few blocks away from the LA apartment they moved into two months ago, and Eddie had spent most of the evening complaining about the dangers of the raw food portion of the menu (although he hadn’t actually ordered anything from that section). During dessert, Richie had threatened to convert to raw veganism. They’d had a great time. On their way back to the car, they’d reached the parking lot and their good-natured argument had been interrupted as a kid who looked like she hadn’t quite reached her teenage years yet had come skidding across the asphalt right in front of them on a battered skateboard, causing Richie to leap back in alarm. Eddie’s mouth had opened automatically to let out a string of curses in her direction - what, kids are dicks - but they’d died in his throat as he’d seen her go clattering to the ground a little further away from them, skateboard spinning off into some distant corner of the lot and red blood blooming on the dirty white of her sleeve. His hand had dived into his cavernous coat pocket before he’d really noticed that he’d reacted and he’d been able to patch her up quickly with the mini first aid kit he tends to keep on his person when he can. It had only been a shallow cut, more of a scrape really, but he’d wiped her arm down with some antiseptic and then stuck a self-adhesive dressing on top. She hadn’t said a word the entire time, and when he’d helped her back to her feet she’d picked up her skateboard, given its new splinters a once-over and then looked at him with a pissed off expression as though  _ he  _ was the reason she’d nearly snapped the thing in half.

“Those things are death traps, okay? It’s just a plank of wood on wheels! If it gets one loose screw, you’re toast! When did children stop riding bikes?” He’d honest-to-god wagged a finger. “Yeah! Try using a bike like a normal kid! Maybe think about investing in some kneepads!”

The girl had stuck her tongue out at him as she dropped the board to the ground and pushed off, disappearing around a corner towards the distant noise of a gaggle of other kids. Eddie had shaken his head and muttered “fucking kids, man, we were never that annoying,” and then he’d turned around because Richie hadn’t said a word throughout the entire ordeal. Richie, it turned out, had been staring at him with a kind of dazed expression, so Eddie had stared back with arms spread in an exasperated ‘and what the fuck’s wrong with you’ pose, and then all of a sudden Richie had dropped that bombshell.

“Is this - is this a bit?” Eddie’s palms are sweating. Richie’s still standing there awkwardly, arms swinging by his sides, the same bare, tender expression on his face. It’s really unnerving.

“It’s not a bit.”

“I’m going to leave you if this is a bit, Richie, I’m going to dump you so fucking hard if this is a bit-”

“It’s not a bit.”

Eddie wipes a palm on his jeans, then tucks it awkwardly in one of his pockets. His head is swimming.

“Richie, I don’t - are we really doing this now?” The plastic wrapping from the antiseptic wipe is crinkled tight in the one hand still balled in a fist, a single folded corner digging into his palm painfully. What the fuck is Richie doing?

“I just - I love you, you know?” Richie is  _ never  _ this serious, and certainly never for such an extended period as this. It’s kind of frightening. “I really fucking love you, Eds.”

“I really love you too?” Eddie is cautious, now. “Is everything alright, what’s happened?”

“Okay, look -” Richie adjusts his glasses slightly, and actually  _ tucks a strand of hair behind his ear _ . Eddie looks down at his boyfriend’s stupid gangly limbs and thinks Richie’s hands might actually be trembling, but then they’re stuffed into the pockets of his bomber jacket and Eddie’s not looking at them anymore because he can feel Richie’s gaze boring into him and looks up so that their eyes meet. Richie looks so focused, so certain.

“Yeah, I really love you. I have done since I was twelve. You know this, and I’m not even talking about our shared trauma here, baby. Once upon a time I was a little gay boy in a horrible rural town who was scared and you used to make my glasses fog up and my heart race and I would do so many stupid things, so many fucking embarrassing things just to get your attention. I carved our initials on the kissing bridge! In 1985! My brain was nothing but bubble hearts filled with pencil writing saying ‘Mrs Richie Kaspbrak’ every time I so much as looked at you! And obviously I was too deeply closeted and frightened of anyone finding out to actually  _ do  _ anything more than try and provoke you into insulting me just for the pure exhilaration of your attention but if I hadn’t been I’d have been filling in all those dumb quizzes we used to laugh at in my sister’s magazine about when you’re going to get married and how many children you’re going to have and whether you’re going to honeymoon in Santa Barbara or Hawaii or what the fuck ever. And guess what? I  _ do  _ want to do all of that corny shit with you. I want to grow old with you, I want you to get pissed at me when I forget to take the meds that I have to take because I’m a hundred years old and about to drop dead. I want to get a dog with you even though you think you’re allergic - you’re definitely not, by the way - not a Pomeranian, obviously, but like, maybe a German Shepherd, fuck, I don’t know, but I want one. Or a cat, or a fucking goldfish - whatever, something that’s  _ ours _ , something that we raise together as a couple. As a proper, committed, lifelong couple. God, I want kids with you! Me, I want actual kids with you, more than one, god knows we’d be terrible parents what with all our undealt-with, undealable-with supernatural trauma but I want that to be something we can go into and tackle  _ together _ . You know, every morning I wake up and I see you there asleep and your pillow has all your gross drool on it, and I  _ smile _ ? What the fuck! I smile at your drool! I laugh at your rank curry farts! I find your horrible fucking polo necks endearing!” Richie finally stops for breath, his chest rising and falling quickly the way it always is after he’s delivered one of his mile-a-minute rambles, and he holds up one finger to indicate that he’s not finished yet. For his part, Eddie can barely breathe, but it’s nothing like the asthma (or faux-asthma, or whatever it had been that plagued him until they killed the clown - probably just constant low-level sheer panic) that he had always associated with any winded sensation in his chest. He feels like he’s thrumming. He doesn’t think he’s ever let Richie talk for so long unencumbered, and he wants to butt in, wants to say something,  _ anything _ , but all he finds himself doing is staring as Richie gathers himself to conclude: “Plus, you’re a really fucking stellar lay and have absolutely ruined me for any and all other dick, so I need to get that on lock as quickly as humanly possible.”

He falls silent, and he looks just a little scared. Eddie thinks that his demeanour recalls clearly that of his youth: a scrawny, disproportioned boy, clearly terrified but determined to go through with whatever they needed to anyway. His eyes, looming large behind his clunky glasses. A twitch in his jaw giving away his nerves. Fidgeting with his hands, now out of his pockets, and which he’d never seemed to learn exactly what to do with. 

“You didn’t even get down on one fucking knee,” says Eddie, and great, he’s crying, which is  _ extremely  _ fucking embarrassing and which he can tell by the look on Richie’s face he’s never going to live down. Every time someone asks for their proposal story, every single time, it’s going to be “oh, you should have seen it, Eddie was in pieces, absolutely sobbed, he was so overwhelmed, I’m tearing up just remembering it”, and Eddie’s horrified to realise he doesn’t mind at all.

“Oh, I can get down on more than one knee if you want me to,” says Richie, and his eyes are sparkling with their usual mischief. “Your mom always preferred me to wait until we were indoors or at least somewhere a little more private, but if you want me to drop to the ground right now I can-”

Eddie cuts him off with a bruising kiss. His cheeks are wet and his hands are shaking as he brings them up to cup Richie’s face, and he kisses Richie with the intensity of everything he wishes he could say. They’re terrible at romance, they always have been; Eddie had literally been dying in a hospital and they still didn’t say I love you until long after he’d been discharged and moved from his wheelchair to walking with a cane. But this physicality between them has always been there, strong. It’s as though they’re magnets, unable to stay apart from one another. For twenty-seven years, Eddie had had an itch beneath his skin that he was never able to relieve, and it had taken all the horror of a second encounter with Pennywise and his near-death experience for them to finally reach for one another and ease that insatiable craving just a little. Eddie loves Richie, knows Richie loves him, but those are words that have always been difficult to say. Repression’s a bitch.

“Not to kill the moment, but you kind of left me hanging there, dude,” says Richie, pulling back and pressing his forehead against Eddie’s. “Is that a yes, or is this just you letting me down generously so you don’t feel bad about rejecting me without giving me a last little something?” Their faces are still close enough that Eddie can feel the warmth of his breath. He feels like he’s going to start crying again.

“Obviously it’s a yes, you absolute  _ fucker _ , do you even have a ring,” he gets out, only a little garbled, and then he reaches down to take Richie’s hand in his.

“I do, actually,” says Richie. “I mean, not on me, left it at home, was not expecting to do this today, but yeah. Had it for about six months. Kept waiting for the right moment.”

Eddie is speechless for a moment, then drags him back into a fevered kiss, and this time he is a little concerned by how publicly they’re doing this. Not because he’s scared, or ashamed, or embarrassed. Because he wants to rip Richie’s clothes off.

“I think,” he mutters in between hungry kisses, “we need to get home right the fuck now.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” says Richie in the British guy voice (that has somehow gotten even worse since their childhood, god, how has it gotten  _ worse _ ) and then quickly follows up with, “and you literally  _ just _ agreed to marry me! So no take backs because I did the bit!”

Eddie scowls at him, still clutching his hand. “You’re a douchebag, and you’re driving,” he says, but he smiles through it despite himself before all of the words are out of his mouth.

-

They waste no time once they reach their apartment. Eddie remembers the similar urgency of their first time, how they’d barely been able to keep their hands off one another long enough to undress, and how Richie had starting begging Eddie before their clothes had even hit the floor (“literally all my life I have been waiting to be railed by you, all my fucking life, please,  _ please _ fuck me”). How it had been over embarrassingly fast for both of them. How they’d both cried and tried to pretend they hadn’t seen the other’s tears for a brief moment, before giving in and just fully weeping together. How they’d lain together afterwards, trying to catch their breath, and how his sweat had felt cooling on his skin. Above all, how safe he’d felt when Richie wrapped his arms around him and they’d drifted off to sleep together, their breathing out of sync and their limbs tangled awkwardly, more intimate than he’d ever allowed himself to be with anyone in his life.

Richie falls back on the bed as Eddie yanks off his T-shirt, struggling with his own button down for a moment before he shrugs it off his shoulders and props himself up on his elbows. He looks up at Eddie with a kind of reverence that almost overwhelms him for a moment; his eyes wide and his spit-slick lips slightly agape. Eddie stares back for a moment, taking in their situation. To put it bluntly, they’ve never had a bad fuck - even the time Richie had whipped out some very suspicious looking ‘Body Edible Chocolate Sensual Couple’s Massage Cream’ that had resulted in a that dodgy rash - but there’s a weight to this. Last time they had sex, they weren’t  _ engaged _ (to be married! To be  _ married _ , Jesus  _ Christ _ ) and all of a sudden there’s a new dimension to everything they’re doing. Everything they’re about to do.

Richie licks his lips, and Eddie groans. He reaches down and palms himself, already hard despite the fact that he’s still half dressed and neither of them have touched the other beyond an initial fumble in the car before they forced themselves to move inside so that they could do this on an actual bed (at forty, with bad backs from both middle-age and space clown battle injuries, car sex is a lot less hot than it sounds). For a moment he just stands there, gazing at Richie with one hand pressing against the front of his jeans and the other gripping onto his balled-up shirt. 

“The whole looming over me with that randy look on your face thing is definitely doing it for me, babe, I won’t lie, but I’m gonna need you to get a little bit closer,” says Richie with just a tinge of desperation, and Eddie remembers himself; he drops the shirt onto the floor and leans forward until he’s crawling onto the bed with him, arms pulling him up to lie between Richie’s legs. He can feel Richie’s dick through the fabric of both their jeans and underwear and shuffles onto his side for a moment, swearing as he tugs too hard at his zipper and it snags for a moment before he manages to get it open and shove his pants down. Richie moves to do the same, but Eddie bats his hands away and slowly peels the jeans down Richie’s thighs, taking care to avoid brushing his hands against the underwear beneath as he does so. Richie curses under his breath, and Eddie knows he’s thinking about how drawn out Eddie has made this in the past. He looks so impatient and Christ, but Eddie fucking loves it.

“God, fuck, please touch me,” Richie chokes, winding his hands into Eddie’s hair as he pulls him down into a kiss. Eddie opens his mouth as he presses flush against him, swipes his tongue across Richie’s lower lip and draws out a filthy moan that reverberates as he pulls back again. He kisses across Richie’s jaw and down his neck, sucking bruises into the soft skin there, and as he does so he can feel Richie arching his back beneath him, desperately seeking out the relief of pressure and friction. He pushes his hips forwards and Eddie reaches down obligingly to slide his left hand beneath the elastic of Richie’s stupid red boxers and wrap his fingers around his dick. At the contact, Richie lets out a gasp - a sound that Eddie never tires of - and then starts suddenly, weakly flapping at Eddie’s arm.

“Wait. Wait, fuck,” says Richie, scrambling up. Eddie sits back, confused, as Richie shuffles to the edge of the bed and then proceeds to fall off in his effort to stand up, having forgotten that his pants are still tangled around his lower legs.

“What are you-”

“The ring, the fucking ring!” says Richie in a pained voice from somewhere on the floor. “We cannot have sex for the first time post-proposal if you aren’t wearing the fucking ring! I’ve fantasised about this too much, you have to let me, you  _ have to _ -”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but the thought is honestly weirdly endearing and so he offers no protest, watching fondly as Richie crawls across the room to their closet and digs around on the floor for a moment. A few seconds later, there’s a crackle of plastic and he lets out a triumphant “ha!”, punching the air with a fist that’s closed tightly around something small and red.

“Did you,” says Eddie in mild horror, “hide that ring box in one of your fucking shoes.”

“I lined it with plastic! I never use my running shoes and you certainly never go anywhere near them-”

“You hid my engagement ring in one of your  _ running shoes _ ?” asks Eddie, the alarm in his voice increasing with every word. “You were supposed to throw those away! You asshole, you had  _ athlete’s foot _ last year!”

“I lined the shoe with plastic and then I put the box in a little plastic bag and the ring itself is also in an even smaller plastic bag inside the box!”

“I am  _ not  _ putting on a ring that’s been anywhere near your  _ disgusting fungal foot spores _ -”

“It’s sterile, it’s in a little bag!”

“That is  _ not _ what sterile means!”

It takes Richie kneeling (on one knee) by the bed waving the now-open box in Eddie’s face to point out the seal on the tiny plastic bag which contains the ring, followed by a thorough spray with a bottle of rubbing alcohol that Eddie keeps in his little bedside table first aid kit and  _ then  _ the liberal application of two antibacterial wipes (“What’s that gonna do against fungus?” “Make me feel better, you dick!”). They’re both sweating for all the wrong reasons by the time Richie finally wrests the thing onto Eddie’s finger, and they both just stare at it for a moment once he has because after all that they’d almost forgotten what it was they were actually doing. The ring is simple, a silver band, but it’s textured. The metal has been hammered and brushed to a rough finish and it gleams dully in the low lit room, shining with a quiet luminescence despite its artfully tarnished surface. It fits Eddie perfectly.

“How’d you know my size?”

“Same as your mom’s, duh.” He raises one eyebrow, and Richie relents. “I might have had your old wedding ring discreetly measured when you asked me to get rid of it before I did any actual disposing,” he says in a voice tinged with apprehension, like he thinks Eddie’s gonna be mad at him. Instead, Eddie just laughs.

“Guess that marriage was useful for something, then,” he says, and Richie beams up at him. Eddie takes one more moment to look at his hand, sensing that weight on his finger; it’s simultaneously so familiar and so new. The last time he wore a ring there, it had felt like a shackle. This feels like liberation.

Running his hands along Richie’s shoulders and then pulling him up from where he’s still kneeling, Eddie catches Richie’s mouth with his own and kisses him deeply.

“Did I say yes? Because it’s a yes.”

“You did,” breathes Richie, “but it’s nice to hear it again. Yes from me too, by the way.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Just thought you should know, just so we’re clear.”

“ _ You _ asked  _ me,  _ I kind of gathered-”

Richie kisses him quiet and pushes him back onto the bed, and it’s almost like the twenty minutes they just spent on the ring never happened. Remembering where they’d left off, Eddie reaches again to take Richie in his hand and this time when he hears that gasp, he doesn’t stop. He rolls them over as he strokes, watching Richie’s eyes fall shut and his mouth go slack. When Eddie grinds down against Richie’s leg, they both groan, and Richie’s hand finds its way back into Eddie’s hair, tightening when Eddie oh-so-lightly traces the head of his dick with the pad of his thumb.

“I am absolutely going to humiliate myself if you keep doing that,” Richie pants out, “so if you want to get it in me at any point you’d better do it sooner rather than later.”

If it weren’t for the fact that they both tend to get worked up this embarrassingly fast, Eddie would laugh. Instead, he stretches his arm over to Richie’s bedside table, where a little bottle of lube is still lying after it was carelessly tossed there a few nights ago. He ignores Richie’s whimper as he pulls his hand away, popping the cap and pouring a little on his fingers.

“Fuck you, come back,” whines Richie, his eyes half-lidded and his brow slightly furrowed.

“I’m  _ trying _ to fuck you, give me one minute, asshole,” and then he pushes one finger forwards and Richie’s head goes back, a flush spreading across his face.

“God, yeah, like that.”

Eddie’s right handed, and it’s a little awkward going forward as he presses into Richie. This is by no means uncharted territory for him, but the fingers on his left hand respond clumsily to what his brain is telling them to do and it takes a little longer than usual to find a rhythm that works those small shallow noises out of Richie, the kind that reveal just how much he’s enjoying himself. It’s more than worth it, though, for Richie’s arched back and his frantic “fuck, fuckfuckfuck  _ fuck _ ,” when Eddie breaches him with his third finger and the ring comes up flush against his skin.

He’s going to have to clean it again, and once this is over and he’s thinking clearly Eddie is going to find this absolutely disgusting, but for the moment he honestly can’t find it in him to care. He curls his fingers, watches as Richie squirms again at the contact with the metal on his hand, and at the debauched look on his face Eddie becomes hyperaware of just how hard he is himself.

“Eddie, that’s - Jesus,  _ Jesus,  _ Eds, shit,” says Richie, “wait, fuck,” and his voice turns petulant as Eddie pulls his hand away. Their eyes meet, and clearly Eddie’s sudden desperation is written all over his face if the way Richie’s jaw sets in response is anything to go by. He brings up his hand to Eddie’s cheek, thumb gently stroking along the thin line out of which a knife had once protruded, and then grins.

“Alright, give it to me, then,  _ fiancé _ .”

Eddie doesn’t need telling twice.

Once he’s fully seated, face buried in Richie’s neck and groaning, he knows it’s not going to take long. Richie’s panting hard beneath him, little cries escaping his mouth whenever Eddie thrusts just right. He scratches one hand down Eddie’s back, gripping the other firmly on his shoulder as though he’s hanging on for dear life. Eddie presses burning kisses into his neck, his movements getting more frenzied by the moment. He twists his arm up and grabs onto the hand that Richie has clamped on his shoulder, pushing it down into the damp sheets and holding onto it tightly. He swallows Richie’s moan as he drags their mouths together, licking deep, and when Richie tenses around him and grips his hand tighter and goes “God shit  _ fuck _ , I  _ love you _ ,”, it’s only a matter of seconds before Eddie’s coming too, white hot and searing. 

Richie goes limp beneath him, runs his hand through Eddie’s hair and smiles at him dizzily, and fuck, Eddie loves him so much he feels like he could choke on it. He kisses along Eddie’s hand and down to the ring, seemingly unfazed by the fact that it those fingers have literally just been in his ass, and says, “I should propose to you more often, Kaspbrak. Fucking hell.”

Eddie rolls onto his back, still breathing hard. “We’re going to have to get you a ring now, too.  _ I’m  _ going to have to get you a ring now, I should say.”

“Just remember, a month’s wages, baby! I don’t come cheap!”

Eddie hits him with a pillow, then kisses him and takes his hand again. “Should we wait a bit until we tell the others?”

“Fuck that,” says Richie immediately, reaching down and snatching up his phone from where it’s fallen onto the carpet. He snaps a quick picture of Eddie’s hand, still entwined with his, and it’s in the WhatsApp group before Eddie can protest.

“You  _ asshole _ , you did not just send our friends a picture of my  _ lubed-up hand _ ,” he shrieks, smacking the phone out of Richie’s hand and ready to threaten preemptive divorce, but once he’s seized hold of the phone himself he sees that the image is far too dark and blurry to even discern individual fingers, let alone anything more detailed than that.

_ is this another dick pic, richie, because it wasnt funny last time and it isnt funny now _ , Ben’s written.

_ I should hope not, there’s something gray in this one _ , from Mike, and Eddie feels his lips quirk against his better judgement. 

“You’re such a fucking dick,” he says, swinging his legs to the side as he gets up to head to the shower.

“You love my fucking dick,” gloats Richie. “You want to  _ marry _ this fucking dick.”

“Is it too late to change my mind?” calls Eddie over his shoulder, but he’s grinning too despite himself and feels his heart leap a little when Richie winks in response, suddenly remembering what he’d said earlier. About a dog. About kids. It’s been two years since they defeated Pennywise, and sometimes he forgets that it wasn’t always like this; he spent twenty-seven years utterly miserable, resigned to the mediocre path his life was on, never so much as daring to imagine that there might be a way out. His future’s never felt as open as it does now. The sheer fucking joy of  _ possibility  _ floods him as he looks at Richie, and he lets himself feel it for a moment before he turns into the bathroom. He leaves the door open and, after a minute, hears the soft pad of feet on carpet coming to join him.

**Author's Note:**

> Eddie’s engagement ring looks something like [this](https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/542237955/mens-band-mens-ring-hammered-mens-ring?ref=shop_home_active_7&frs=1) in silver. I did indeed browse Etsy for something that I think he’d actually wear - I know he’s a fashion icon in the book and flaunts a gigantic ruby on his little finger, but I felt like movie!Eddie would probably be a little more reserved in his jewellery choices. This isn’t to say, of course, that Richie didn’t seriously consider getting him a massive fuck-off diamond - but hey, they’ve got the rest of their lives, every precious stone under the sun can have its turn when Richie starts dishing out the anniversary gifts.  
Although I didn't see it until after I wrote this, [this](https://mxgicdave.tumblr.com/post/188080814648/a-few-years-down-the-line) piece of art really encapsulates my little vision of the future for these two (I maintain that they wouldn't have a Pomeranian, though - too much trauma packed into those cute little bodies).


End file.
